The Orange France suicide cases shine a light on corporate morality

The competitive environment can be used to justify all manner of extreme measures, with 'casualties' an unavoidable part of doing business

John Malkovich and Dustin Hoffman in the film version of Death of a Salesman. 'In his play Arthur Miller captured the essential human dilemma of an individual's (doomed) attempt to retain basic dignity when financial pressures are proving overwhelming.' Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
Everett Collection/Rex Feature

Two weeks ago the news looked good for telecoms company Orange France. Shares rose to a four-month high on the promise of greater future profitability, and Reuters reported that the company had made almost €1bn of savings over the past year through cost-cutting "on everything from software to staff". Orange France "pledged to continue those efforts", and chief financial officer, Gervais Pellissier, said the company had returned to levels of commercial activity not seen since 2009.

Unfortunately, this is not the only parallel with that period. Between 2008 and 2009, 35 company employees committed suicide; and so far this year another 10 have done so – almost as many (11) as killed themselves in all of last year. The Observatory for stress and forced mobility in France, which monitors workplace health and was originally set up in response to the wave of suicides seen at Orange France five years ago, says that eight of the 10 suicides this year were directly related to work matters.

What on Earth is going on at this company? Of course, the causes of suicide can be varied, complicated, private and sometimes ultimately unknowable. Orange France seems to have treated past incidents seriously, and taken some action to train managers both to moderate their behaviour and recognise warning signs. But the problems have come back. Union officials complain of a return to aggressive and intimidatory management techniques. One of them, CGT member Christian Mathorel, said: "They didn't listen to us. Now, a year later, we're in a deep hole."

Corporate culture is sometimes described as "the way things are done around here", and company morality can often be, in practice, relativist rather than absolute. That is, things may be tolerated – corner cutting, expenses fiddling, bogus sick days – as long as the overall success of the business is not threatened. The slide from purity to corruption takes place gradually, in a process that may not even be noticed by anyone while it is happening.

And thus, one suicide after another may simply be put down to ordinary work stresses (as well as private, non-work-related matters), rather than to a crisis of unreasonable and brutal management. The competitive environment might be used by bosses to justify all kinds of extreme measures. If you have become fluent in the language of the "global race" you may have convinced yourself that losers – casualties – are an unavoidable part of doing business today. And suicides at work are indeed a global phenomenon, as Apple discovered when a huge wave of suicides and attempted suicides were exposed at its Foxconn manufacturing sites in China.

This is an old story re-emerging in a new form. In his play Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller captured the essential human dilemma of an individual's (doomed) attempt to retain basic dignity when financial pressures are proving overwhelming. When Willy Loman, the struggling salesman, tries to negotiate a less stressful position for himself at his company, he explains that he is feeling all used up: "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit," he says. Willy's wife, Linda, tries and fails to save him from committing suicide.

Sensing disaster, she urges her sons to make one last effort to help him, and makes this plea: "I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person." It is a speech that should be sent to the chief executive, chief financial officer and human resources director of Orange France. Before it's too late.